


To Surrender is Divine

by scarredsodeep



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexual Angst, F/F, Iron Man 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3476849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two women with immaculate self-control collide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Surrender is Divine

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for my beloved Shan's 25th birthday. There is intended to be a second part, and I plan to finish it just as soon as I figure out what the hell happens in it, but the good news is it works as a stand-alone too. Feedback, bad jokes, and general chatting are all incredibly welcome.

Pepper Potts had never been comfortable with grey areas. Hers had been a life of precision and absolutes: top of her high school class, full scholarship to Ivy League of her choosing, career as right-hand woman to the most sensational businessman and inventor in the country, and now acting CEO of an international tech firm that was the leading name in clean energy. The best of the best, always: a golden gleaming grain of wheat high above—56 floors above, to be exact—any sign of chaff. She was good at these things—arranging finances and schedules and projects just so. Managing Tony. Running Stark Industries. Accomplishing whatever she set out to do. In general, succeeding. Not merely good—at this, Pepper was exceptional.

Neat ponytail, immaculate fingernails, crisply pressed suit, perfectly symmetrical eyeliner—everything in her control was precise. Flawless. How, then, was her personal life always such a mess? Things with Tony had always been so liminal, so complicated. Their roles had bled together so that she never knew if she was dancing with her boss or scheduling meetings with her boyfriend. The shades of uncertainty were intolerable. Were even more irritating than Tony. Who she loved. Had loved. Did love?

Anguished, Pepper resumed pacing, stalking back and forth across her brand new office, leaving stiletto-shaped puncture wounds in the cream-colored carpet.

As if that wasn’t enough. Whatever she had—or had had—with him, whatever they had been—or were still—to each other. As if that wasn’t already entirely too much grey, there was this thing she felt cramped and trembling in her gut, tucked under the tender skin of her hip bones, when she thought about Natalie Rushman. Which Pepper didn’t even think was her real name. So this weird feeling had crouched there, quivering, extremely distracting and confusing, until last night in the very literal aftermath of Tony’s birthday party, when Natalie had grabbed Pepper’s hand to help her out of the smoking rubble and Pepper’s jolting heartbeat had shot through her veins, out her palm, and into Natalie’s own bloodstream. As if electrified they were held together in paralysis, connected heart to heart by Pepper’s pulse; then Natalie had wrenched her hand free and Pepper had stumbled, stammered something asinine about placing a call to Tony’s contractor, and Natalie had melted away in that leopard-print dress, back into the wreckage to sweep for trapped party guests. Which was stupidly, ridiculously heroic of her, Pepper thought crossly. Especially in those heels.

This morning, after her heart had leapt into Natalie’s hand, Pepper was finding it difficult to keep the distracting Natalie-feeling contained in the cage created by her hip bones. It kept crawling up her ribs, sending her heart skipping and shuddering along, or melting lower, spreading warmth and tension through her pelvis. These sensations, though not disagreeable, were incredibly inconvenient. Pepper did not approve of them. Last night Tony had dressed up as Iron Man and trashed his own home, had a powered-up robot battle with his best friend (which was currently splashed all over the news), and then vanished. Add this to the frantic, largely incomprehensible phone call she’d just received from the head of Legal about patent law and the Air Force and Justin Hammer, and Pepper had quite enough to deal with already.

Pepper spent the next several hours squabbling with Legal, arranging for Tony’s home to be rebuilt, mitigating the incumbent PR nightmare, and talking down overeager legal representatives of minor celebrities and heiresses who had sustained surface abrasions or sprained ankles or, in one case, snags to a very expensive gowns during last night’s ‘festivities’. She tried in vain to get Rhodey on the phone and deliver some pointed questions, and was entirely unsuccessful at tracking down Tony’s current drunk, overpowered whereabouts. How a famous drunk billionaire in a robot suit could stage a fabulous and destructive brawl and then utterly vanish was not clear to her. Between this (potentially disastrous for the company) aggravation, being hounded by at least six major news networks for a statement about last night’s debauchery, and scheduling a press conference at which she had no idea what she’d even say with Tony remaining at large and possibly dangerous, she had no patience left for the peculiar Natalie-feeling traveling all through her body just however it pleased. When her train of thought was scattered from her head by a vision of Natalie’s shapely, leopard-clad ass for the nth time that day, Pepper pushed her chair back from her desk and said aloud, “Fuck it. I’m done.”

It would be immensely unprofessional, she told herself sternly as she poured out a measure of vermouth from the fully stocked liquor cabinet in Tony’s office, to drink during the work day. Particularly with a hideous press conference, for which she was utterly unprepared, scheduled to occur in just a few hours, she thought, adding a healthy pour of gin. She found the jar of olives in Tony’s miniature fridge and dropped five into the wide-mouthed glass one by one, careful not to splash. Therefore she would resist the urge, she resolved firmly, taking a large, grateful sip.

Pepper was halfway through her second swallow when the intercom announced, “Natalie Rushman here to see you, Ms. Potts.” Pepper choked spectacularly, sending a fine spray of martini down the front of her blouse. “Shit,” said Pepper. As she reached for a tissue to blot it with, the intercom buzzed again, startling Pepper into knocking her glass over, gin and olives spilling out all over the counter. “Miss Rushman has forced her way past reception, Ms. Potts. I have alerted security.” Pepper had time to exclaim “Shit!” exactly one more time before Natalie threw open her office doors and strode in to find Pepper booze-soaked and scrambling to mop up a spreading martini flood at 11:45 on a Wednesday morning.

“Shit,” Pepper said again, this time with a sigh. The first time in at least twenty years she’d lost her composure and who should walk in but the woman who had effortlessly thrown her completely out of orbit.

Pepper adopted her best posture and iciest stare, for an excess of composure seemed like the only way to regain a modicum of control over the situation. “Miss Rushman,” she said coolly, as if she were not wearing a martini. The puddle began to trip off the counter and onto the carpet. An olive, riding the tide, landed on the pristine white carpet with a tiny _splish_. Pepper pretended not to notice. “I don’t believe you have an appointment.”

Natalie, Pepper observed, was dressed in some kind of clinging black body armor that zipped down the front. It was bisected rather smartly by what Pepper could only describe as a utility belt. Cartridges ringed Natalie’s wrists and her long scarlet hair, such a different red than Pepper’s own, spilled wildly down her shoulders. The overall effect was of such fierce, sharp-edged competence that it took Pepper’s breath away. Having noticed the fit of Natalie’s suit, Pepper was having trouble _stopping_ noticing.

“We’ve located Mr. Stark,” Natalie said crisply, her face unreadable. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Oh thank god,” Pepper said in a rush. “Is he ali—wait, _we_?”

Natalie sighed, the slightest frown touching her hips. No—lips. Lips. _Look at her face, Pepper._ Something almost like regret in her voice, Natalie said, “I am a covert operative of a government agency called SHIELD. In the course of positioning myself to observe and assist Mr. Stark, some deception was necessary…”

Natalie went on, detailing the many sleights of hand, untruths, and false pretenses that had allowed her to infiltrate Stark Industries, and her motive—orders—to do so. Quite without her permission Pepper’s hand snaked out and plucked one of the sad, shipwrecked olives off the wet countertop and brought it, stinging with gin, to her lips. Before Natalie—or rather, _Natasha_ —was finished, Pepper had eaten all four.

⧗

Natasha was accustomed to sliding in and out of identities and all their attendant preferences and quirks—style of vocal inflection, favorite sports teams, wardrobe tendencies, career, sexual proclivities, hometown, cable package, family history, etc. She had been doing it for so long—slipping out of herself and into all the assembled trivia that made some other person who they were, and then slipping out of that person to become another, as the job demanded—that it was hard to know what was real. What was her, and what was a piece of an assumed identity that had stuck. Sometimes she wondered if there _was_ no real her, she’d started so young. Instead of a person she was a sieve. She could hold the contents of a life, but only for a short while; then the personality would pour out, leaving behind only those few traces that stuck on the wires to suggest it had ever been.

For example. Nat was fairly certain she could remember being attracted to men, dating back to her extremely short childhood. What was the kid version of attraction? Did she press the faces of her girl dolls against the faces of boy dolls? She hadn’t had dolls at all. But when she got older, certainly. In Russia, in training, there had been… there was evidence. She had to assume it predated the brainwashing, because why would the Soviets bother programming that in? Other areas of preference—nail polish color, type of pie—they hadn’t rewritten. She had.

So. Attracted to men. Certainly now and in the past, probably dating back as long as she did.

So what about Pepper?

Pepper, who had been standing before her with the slightest frown on her lips for thirty seconds, now. Forty. Fifty-five. Natasha had rarely been so aware of the passage of seconds. Other occasions on which time had passed so agonizingly slowly: during interrogations, when her face was held under water and precious oxygen slipped out between her lips, lost forever; when Agent Coulson rambled on about the exciting new features of her updated, extra-secure ID badge; when her arms and legs were locked, palms and feet against the corners of the walls and she held herself, shaking, not even daring to breathe, begging the water droplets from her shower to stop falling off her, up near the ceiling of a tiny closet while expatriate thugs hunted for her mere inches below her exposed abdomen. It was possible that Pepper took her breath away.

Sixty seconds and Pepper spoke. “So you were never who you said you were.” Her voice had an efficient, businesslike snap to it; she spoke firmly. Even the way she’d eaten olives out of a puddle had captivated Nat with its no-nonsense attitude. Pepper Potts was a powerhouse of a woman. Natasha had revealed her cover to countless individuals over the years, and fled from even more with no apology or explanation. Some of them marks, rubes—some of them friends. People she’d grown to care for. But she didn’t remember ever feeling like this while she did it. Natasha felt something prickling and low—almost as if she was ashamed. Natasha dismissed that as soon as she thought it. Lying to a capable, autonomous woman in a sleek grey suit and low-slung Leboutins did not compare to the atrocities on her shame list. If she were to entertain negative affect over any aspect of this encounter, it should be the reckless decision to flagrantly disobey her orders and reveal her cover to Pepper Potts. The reasons for this reckless decision, were there any reasons at all, were a total mystery to the Black Widow—a woman notorious for her systematic annihilation of mysteries.

“I suppose not,” Nat heard herself reply. She sounded impassive, made of stone. Practiced at distorting herself, remaking her emotions, betraying nothing. Her insides shifted uneasily at the thought of betrayal. What betrayal was she twinging at, exactly? There were so many to choose from: lying about her identity to Pepper Potts (something she had done a hundred times, to a thousand people). Breaking Nick Fury’s orders to maintain her cover at Stark. The juxtaposition of the words she’d said in Tony Stark’s ear and the thing that had leapt between her hand and Pepper’s last night in the rubble and dust. And that was just the last 24 hours of sins.

Pepper’s hands were on her hips, fingers splayed. Tiny pink splotches were appearing on her face. Natasha began to feel as if she never should have started this conversation. She could have just stayed Natalie Rushman, worked at Pepper’s side with that bruising tension crackling between them, waiting to see if anything could have grown in such electric air. Probably not. Natasha felt herself frown. Director Fury didn’t keep her in any one place long. He did not use her for long-term jobs. He considered her skill set too valuable; she was an asset he preferred liquid. This usually suited her—she’d never been very good at staying still. Being solid.

And what purpose, Nat asked herself, had she been serving, telling Pepper the truth? (Part of the truth. As much of the truth as she ever told, anyway.) Had she been trying to remove herself, to cut a bright burning slash through whatever she had felt last night? Or had she been trying to make amends, to come clean, out of some twisted notion of nobility and honor?

“Well, thank you for your services, then, Miss Rush—Miss Romanov. I’ll need your security badge, and there’s a nondisclosure agreement all exiting employees must sign.”

Natasha’s insides convulsed again. “I won’t be leaving,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Pepper’s voice a dagger.

“My assignment hasn’t changed. Director Fury wants me here, to continue monitoring your employer.”

“As Natalie Rushman?” Pepper’s voice flat with disbelief.

“With my cover intact, yes.” Natasha was too well trained to let it show on her face, but she was feeling that thing again, that something so close to embarrassment.

“That is unacceptable.” Pepper’s mouth a thin line.

Twenty different biting replies sprung to Nat’s lips. She did not like being made to feel things without her permission. “Not everything is up to you, Miss Potts,” she said, turning to leave before she did something truly regrettable. Though she couldn’t resist adding over her shoulder, “Accept it.”

⧗

The press conference went reasonably well, which is to say Stark Industries didn’t lose any further investors and nothing actually burned to the ground. Pepper put on a blouse that smelled of laundry detergent instead of gin, plastered a smile on her face, and delivered a statement about planned renovations to Tony’s estate, a lively demonstration of the capabilities of an exciting new model of the suit Tony was developing, and who didn’t like to go a little overboard on their birthday anyway, etc etc. Because she was damned good at what she did, it was a convincing performance, if somewhat canned. She refused all questions.

That night, she dreamed of a shadowy figure clad in tight black leather. Every time Pepper made out the woman’s face, it changed. In the dream, Pepper unzipped the figure’s suit slowly, sliding the zipper’s cool metal tongue down and down and down, exploring with hands and mouth the soft shadow-silk skin beneath. She woke up sweaty, turned on, out of breath. And annoyed.

Using his uncanny knack for doing exactly the wrong thing, Tony showed up that morning with strawberries. He wore a face like he was contrite, but Pepper knew him better. That face was one of many he wore to get what he wanted. And what he wanted right now was to run away from what was difficult, to flagellate himself, to show her what she meant to him while also foisting off a crippling amount of hard work in a single, effortless act of self-deprecation. To save the company, so he would be free to destroy himself.

Pepper Potts was not interested in playing this game, the Tony game. Not today. She had played enough times to know it was not possible to win. She kept her teeth closed over her tongue, a brittle frown on her face, and sent him away. If he wanted to self-destruct, she wasn’t going to stop him. Not this time. Maybe if she refused to participate, he’d change the rules. Or maybe he’d just keep sinking until he hit the bottom of this thing, and broke open, and the good and the poison alike spilled out.

After Tony left, she discovered she had almost no memory of what they’d said. The whole day passed as if in the ringing, underwater seconds following an explosion. The dream kept prickling at her fuzzy, staticked brain. Her mood was not improved by it.

Late that evening, the sun set brilliantly outside her office window as Pepper packed her leather attaché to capacity and prepared to leave. She was clacking purposefully across the lobby, abandoned but for a lone security guard at the desk, when the absolute last person she had energy for stepped out of the shadows.

“Miss Potts,” said Natalie—said the woman who had formerly been Natalie. Pepper did not stop. She spared Miss Romanov only the most cursory glance.

But Natalie—Natasha—was tenacious. She followed, one stride back on Pepper’s right. Pepper was familiar with that positioning: it was where assistants walked. It was where Miss Rushman had walked, first on Tony’s heels, then on hers. It was where Pepper herself had walked for most of her career. Pepper slammed open the door into the parking garage with more force than was necessary. Natasha swept through on her heels. Abruptly, with very little warning, Pepper snapped. A few feet from her parking spot she whirled around, her hands in furious fists, and half-asked, half-shouted, “ _Can I help you?_ ”

“I wanted to make sure you’re all right. The last few days… and this morning, with Mr. Stark…” Natasha said in her husky voice, tucking a long carmine curl behind her ear.

“Natalie—Natasha—god, I don’t even know what to _call_ you—Tony is gone. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, go where he is? He’s the one you’re spying on.” Pepper was too tired of this day to care that she sounded petulant as a fifteen-year-old boy.

Natasha blinked, long lashes over quick green eyes. Pepper became aware of the empty, echoing parking garage around them, the concrete columns and low light and eerie silence spreading from them. Hers was the only car in sight. “I am where I’m supposed to be,” she said levelly. “You can’t do Mr. Stark’s job and your old one at the same time. I can be an asset, Miss Potts.”

“And what am I supposed to do with you?” Pepper asked, exasperated.

“I’m your assistant; do whatever you want with me.”

Pepper’s neatly lipsticked mouth dropped open. Even Natasha looked slightly startled at what she’d said. _That is not what she meant,_ Pepper told herself fiercely, as a low zipper that went on forever smoldered in her memory.

But what Pepper said out loud was, “Dinner. I want dinner.”

Natasha nodded briskly, curls bouncing. She did not smile. “Excellent,” she said. “You drive. I’ll cook.”

⧗

Strictly speaking, Natasha Romanov did not know what her orders were. She twisted her hair up in a bun to keep it out of her face while she leaned over a spitting wok, the tip of her tongue between her teeth in concentration. If she limited herself to an absolutely factual view of events, she would be forced to admit that she had not contacted Director Fury since she had revealed her cover to Pepper Potts, for absolutely no reason Fury would find acceptable. Technically, she had deactivated her earpiece and turned off her phone after delivering the news. So, was it _possible_ that Fury had different orders for her than to maintain her cover and remain at Stark Industries? Was there a slim probability that, following Stark’s increasingly negative evaluation for the Avengers Initiative, Fury would choose to remove her from her current assignment?

Perhaps. Maybe. But it wasn’t like she’d actually received that information. It was really all just speculation. Natasha felt a smile turn up her lips as she tossed strips of steak into the sliced squash and onions she was sautéing in hibachi sauce. Given the Justin Hammer situation and the reports they’d been getting about Ivan Vanko being less dead than originally believed, Natasha believed this was a valuable placement for her. She was not confident in Tony Stark’s ability to manage the situation without SHIELD’s involvement, so she was calling her own move on this one. It had nothing, _nothing_ to do with Pepper.

Pepper was seated at the island behind Natasha, drinking white wine in large sips. Pepper’s kitchen was spacious and clean, and Nat was enjoying dirtying her counters, pots, and pans. She knew, based on careful professional observation, that Pepper was more of a takeout person. She didn’t allow herself enough time to cook. Nat had been watching—it was her job to watch—and even she didn’t know when Pepper had last had a home-cooked meal (peanut butter on toast, eaten on the way to work, notwithstanding).

Still, it was a kind of insanity that had led her to volunteer to cook. She was a woman of various talents: espionage, hand-to-hand combat, weapons development, etc. Preparing semi-extravagant meals with which to impress staggeringly impressive women was not one of them. Nat took a sip of her own wine to quell the shrill voice in her skull that demanded with increasing desperation what the hell she thought she was doing. Even more insane was that Pepper had agreed to it. Pepper Potts had taken Natasha upstairs to her clean, neatly furnished apartment, and calmly sat down while Natasha ransacked her cabinets and fridge. The kitchen was spotless, everything gleaming; the only sign a person inhabited this space was a single spoon in the sink, and the food in the fridge, wilting silent and untouched in courier bags from a grocery delivery service. On the faucet, the door handles, the appliances—there weren’t even fingerprints. If a woman this meticulous, this orderly, brought Nat up to her apartment… she meant it. She must have meant it.

Nat hummed to herself a little as she stirred the contents of the wok vigorously, as a sort of signal to Pepper that she was finding the long silence companionable, not awkward. She hadn’t been Pepper’s assistant for very long—they’d met only a few weeks ago—but they had never needed to say much to one another. Perhaps that was due to the difference in status at work, or the sharp tension that had sprung up between them, the tension Nat had originally attributed to Tony-related jealousy. But Natasha liked that they did not need to say words. Her heart was hammering stupidly in her chest. Natasha did not trust herself to say words. She had no idea what she was doing here.

Maybe tonight she didn’t have to be Black Widow, or even Natasha Romanov. She took another sip from her glass, letting the smell of wine and sizzling meat and Pepper Potts pour through her. Nat had briefly inhabited the life of a fictional Czech college student, slumping in lecture halls with a hoodie puled low, acing her exams but with a careless air, staying out all night in a halo of cigarette butts and beer cans, wooing the daughter of an oil magnate, experimenting for the sake of being young and alive. (Ostensibly. Actually it had been for the sake of stealing state secrets.) Maybe tonight Nat could turn off all the rest, the greedy, gabbling other selves, her tendency to observe and collect and manipulate, her inability to comprehend actions without an agenda and just—be.

Pepper was staring at her over the rim of her wine glass. For an irrational second Natasha wondered if Pepper was reading her mind. Then Pepper said, “Is it supposed to be on fire like that?”

Nat had stared at Pepper for too long. She spun around to face the wok, which was engulfed in flames. Nat’s instincts took over. She planted her palm on the marble surface of the island, hinged at the waist, and swung her legs over the counter. She slid through the motion, touching down on the other side of the counter only for the split second it took to push off with her toes, fluidly lunging forward to seize the fire extinguisher she had noted upon entering. She wrapped one hand around it even as she spun away, and had the extinguisher prepped and in position by the time she was back at the stove. Five seconds after noticing the flames—and why she could not apply that response time and vigilance to cooking itself, Nat asked herself constantly and without answer—she had soaked the stove in flame-suffocating foam.

For the second time that night, Pepper stared at her with her mouth slightly open. “I’m guessing you didn’t learn that in Legal,” she said, blinking some of the surprise off her face. Some tiny part of Nat registered pleasure that Pepper had received information about her speed, strength, and flexibility. The other parts of Nat immediately turned on the lascivious part and began berating it.

“This happens… often,” Natasha said, surveying the stove unhappily.

Pepper was on her feet, unaware of the entrancing motion of her hips as she walked towards Natasha. She pressed Nat’s wine glass back into her hand, their fingers grazing in the exchange. Nat was overly aware of her pulse in the fingertips brushed by Pepper. “Drink,” Pepper advised. She pulled open a larger drawer, which proved to be filled to the brim with takeout menus. “I too am prepared for stove-on-fire scenarios.”

⧗

One bottle of wine and several cartons of Mediterranean food later, Pepper was sitting on her living room floor, her legs tucked behind her like a mermaid. Natasha was laying on her back, legs bent over an ottoman, surveying the ceiling. For Pepper it was a moment out of time: cozy and aimless yet charged, itching with potential. The room was dimly lit, a scented candle flickering and casting interesting shadows. It felt like college, or earlier—a summer night in high school. Pepper felt not like an overburdened CEO in the middle of a company and/or personal crisis, but like a young girl, with everything stretched out before her feet. Her skin seemed to vibrate with awareness of Natasha, who was near enough that Pepper could have traced her fingers down Nat’s pale arm, found the soft crease in the inner hollow of her elbow. Pepper finished her fourth glass on wine in a gulp. She did not know what would happen next. This feeling was not unusual itself, but her sense of relish was.

“It sounds crazy even to me,” said Pepper, “but I trust you. You lied about so much, but I’m sitting here, trusting you. I didn’t decide to. It’s something I _feel_. Does this sound crazy to you?”

Natasha grinned at the ceiling, and Pepper relished that, too. Natasha’s face was usually so controlled, expressionless. Pepper wondered if people experienced her that way, too. She wondered—was dying to know, actually—how Natasha experienced her.

“You should and you shouldn’t,” Natasha said in a voice that gave nothing away. “Anyway, it wasn’t ‘lying’ so much as ‘working.’ It wasn’t a decision, it was what my boss told me to do.”

“Less comforting than you might imagine. What if your boss tells you to do something horrible?” Pepper asked carelessly. “It’s not ‘spying,’ it’s just ‘working’? It’s not ‘betraying,’ it’s just ‘working’?”

“It’s not ‘killing,’” Natasha said flatly. But when she rolled onto her side and propped herself on an elbow, she was still smiling. “He didn’t tell me to stop lying.” Pepper took a moment to parse this, and tipped her head to one side. Natasha laughed to herself and said, “He won’t be happy. I compromised the entire operation. My cover was arduously built and strategically placed. The resources lost in man-hours alone, and so on.” Natasha dropped the self-important voice she had been using in mockery of someone Pepper had never met, and added, “ _I_ decided to tell you who I really am, and why I’m really here. I don’t know why I did that.”

“You seem like someone who knows why she does things,” Pepper said, a little serious and a little breathless.

“Do I? You bring out a different quality, Miss Potts.”

Pepper felt the words land on her skin, fluttering there uncertainly. There was something to this moment. She wondered, if she touched Natasha, if she’d feel it again—the desperate jolting of her heart passing out of her and into Nat. She wondered if she should touch Natasha, whose shining hair soft skin pink parted lips were so _near_.

Instead she blurted out stupidly, “Do you think Tony’s all right?”

Natasha’s feet hit the floor. She pulled herself into a neat, straight-backed sitting position. Her face was without expression. Pepper could have said literally any other thing, and Natasha would have stayed on the living room floor, her hair spread out around her like a corona of incarnadine light. But Pepper said _Tony_ , and Natasha was sitting upright, straightening her shirt, all business. There was no trace of the rare smile that had been on her face moments ago. Pepper felt that, if she were to reach out to touch Natasha’s arm now, there would be nothing there.

Pepper hadn’t said to herself what she wanted. She hadn’t thought it, hadn’t breathed it, hadn’t even looked at it straight on. But she felt the possibilities closing down around her, and she felt a drowning sadness at the loss.

“He tried to tell you he loved you today,” Natasha said, her cheeks flushed from wine or feeling, incongruous on such an impassive face. Milk-white skin and rosy blush: she was something made from porcelain, her fine features painted with an infinitesimal brush. God, Pepper wanted to touch her. Pepper wanted it in a deep, primal, frightening way. Pepper wanted it with a want that threatened to consume her.

“You didn’t let him,” Natasha went on. Their bodies were still very close, Pepper observed, her heart climbing up her throat. Natasha lifted her hand and, with all the grace and delicacy of a bird’s wing, stroked a burning line down Pepper’s cheek. She kept that hand cupped lightly at Pepper’s jaw, staring hard into her eyes. Even at this distance, even with her hand bumping so faintly against Pepper’s skin, the woman was unreadable.

Natasha’s voice was even lower, huskier than usual. “I’m not asking you to love me forever,” she said, tipping her head towards Pepper until their foreheads rested against one another. Natasha’s voice was a rusty whisper, a pleading breath. “Just for right now.”

It was a small thing, turning her cheek into Natasha’s hand and letting their lips slide together. Small as an exhale, a blink, the trembling of a cinder tossed by wind. And yet it was tremendous: mouths meeting, not just heartbeats but _heat_ , and the taste of garlic and wine on Natasha’s tongue, and when had Pepper parted her lips and let in Natasha’s tongue? Pepper’s hands were lost in that ocean of claret curls, a melting sigh trapped somewhere in her throat, and the carpet rose up to meet them as they fell together, following the infinitesimal motion of Pepper seeking a kiss.


End file.
